Lando Norris claims first F1 victory at star-studded Miami Grand Prix as Max Verstappen is forced to settle for second in front of Donald Trump

Donald Trump, wearing his famous red cap, would be the last person to believe he couldn’t make the Formula 1 championship great again.

It was his first known visit to the world’s best series and he was a guest of McLaren. He went inside, clenched his fists and wished them luck before the 57 laps started. And tried to rub off some of his confidence on his hosts.

The papaya man visits the papaya team.

And as if by magic, Lando Norris won his first race on a sunny day in Miami. There was certainly a bit of luck involved, in the form of a safety car. But for Norris, the 24-year-old racer from Glastonbury, Somerset, a whole lot of relief fell from his slender shoulders and he became the 21st British winner.

He carried with him the unwanted title of fourteen podiums without a win, more than anyone in history, and someone felt this was weighing him down. He’s more introspective than his bubbly, made-for-Netflix public demeanor suggests.

His big chance came on lap 28, almost exactly at the halfway mark of the race.

This was caused by Kevin Magnussen of Haas kicking Williams’ Logan Sargeant into the wall. Sargeant, from down the road in Fort Lauderdale, was out of luck. Anyway, the suspension of racing gave Norris a free stop. It gave him a chance to maintain the hitherto deceptive ‘lead’, because he hadn’t quit yet and everyone else had.

Well done. But who was in the car right behind him? None other than his best friend on the grid, Max Verstappen, the world champion, the machine that cannot be beaten (unless his engine breaks down).

In private, Norris rates Verstappen as the best driver the sport has known. He believes he has all the attributes to succeed at the top, so having the Dutchman in a blistering Red Bull in his rear-view mirror as the safety car rolled in hardly looked like an uneventful drive on Sunday.

It must have given him the wind at his back. Now everything he had hoped for before and after his 2021 Melbourne debut – a spotty teenager nervously pulling at his finger joints as he spoke – was running through his mind.

Could he keep his composure? The first evidence was ‘yes’. It was of course shod on younger rubber, but on the same hard rubbers. He immediately set a fastest lap and stayed ahead, while Verstappen struggled. He made his complaints known on the radio. Thirteen laps to go and he had built up a four-second lead.

It was probably written in the stars. Verstappen, usually as dominant as you can imagine, managed to drive into a bollard early on.

The three-time world champion went a third of the way off the track in Turn 15 and grabbed the red-white cone. But at this point you’d think nothing – plastic, human or alien – could stop the Dutchman as he dominates everything he routinely comes into contact with.

That Norris won was a testament to his talents and built on his impressive performance, perhaps his most well-rounded performance in China a fortnight ago when he finished second.

All this joy of Norris seemed like a distant fantasy in the early stages. Verstappen had taken the lead without any problems, keeping McLaren’s Oscar Piastri three seconds behind him in the scorching Florida heat. But Verstappen wasn’t actually romping, a sign of things to come.

I don’t know if you would call this race chic. It’s too brutal for that. That was a perfect place for the politician who might be elected the next leader of the free world while sitting in a prison cell.

On Monday, the big new Norris fan will fight charges in a New York courtroom that he forged documents to cover up hush money he gave to a former adult film actress and a Playboy model. Still, he was the main attraction on Sunday, even among the top performers who came (and those who perhaps stayed away because of him).

In a surreal scene, some two hours before the lights went out, his security men called for the construction of a canal that would take him from the central paddock building to the McLaren garage. Someone shouted, “I hope you win, Donald!” He turned and said, “I have to.”

He went into the garage for about ten minutes. He spoke to the top of the sport, including Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali and FIA president Mohammed ben Sulayem. He was in the McLaren stable at the request of the team’s majority owners, the Bahraini sovereign wealth fund led by the kingdom’s crown prince, Salman.

When the conversation was over, Trump went through the same routine through the crowd. An OnlyFans model, whose skimpy clothing left little to the imagination, took a selfie with the presumptive Republican nominee. He stuck out his jaw and stalked him, followed by his security guard.

He hadn’t quite gotten his way this week. A billionaire friend, Steven Witkoff, had tried to organize a fundraiser at the track. The idea was to charge attendees $250,000 to attend the function on a Paddock Club rooftop suite.

The organizers have eradicated that.

But Trump watched from the same spot as Norris took victory, a huge 7.6 seconds from Verstappen, with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc third. Norris raised both hands in celebration after crossing the line.

Colleagues at McLaren, who felt they had to underline their non-political nature in a statement after Trump’s visit, were overwhelmed. They danced in the pit lane.

Lewis Hamilton, a McLaren world champion at the time, gave Norris a thumbs up from the cockpit.

Norris shouted an indescribable sound. “We did it, Will,” he told his engineer Will Joseph. Zak Brown, the McLaren CEO who had entertained Trump in the garage, hugged everyone he could find.

“I think it should be like this,” said a clearly emotional Norris, dedicating the triumph to his grandmother. “Coming in today, I knew it was a day full of opportunity.”

Yes, he made himself great.